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EXT. MIDWESTERN FARM/KINNICK STADIUM – NIGHT
RED GRANGE (ghost) walks out of cornfield, stumbles into Kinnick Stadium, watches Penn State and Iowa live…because streaming doesn’t exist in the afterlife. As the clock strikes zero, Grange approaches another legend.
GRANGE
Is this college football hell?
KIRK FERENTZ (shrugging)
It’s Iowa.
Annnd scene…
All kinds of unpredictable stuff happens every week all over the country in college football. Kinnick Stadium at night is a different animal. In one sense, one of the nation’s loudest environments against a top-10 defense is a nightmare venue for a team starting a redshirt freshman quarterback. In another sense, if you’re gonna bounce back from one of the most gut-punching weeks—hell, months—in program history, why not go for broke and play like you have nothing to lose against a team that has made a living off of beating more talented teams with a lot to lose?
The Nittany Lions, with Terry Smith and Ethan Grunkemeyer (and, uhhhhh, Jaxon Smolik) leading the way rather than James Franklin and Drew Allar, played mostly like they had nothing to lose in Saturday’s 25-24 loss to the Hawkeyes, using turnovers and the churning legs of Kaytron Allen to hang around until the final minutes, when Grunkemeyer’s inexperience and Andy Kotelnicki’s, um, familiar habits stalled the offense.
